At a recent press launch attended by Machinery Market at its Austrian facility in Reutte, Ceratizit Group (www.ceratizit.com) unveiled ‘high dynamic turning’ (HDT), which it says “has turned traditional turning on its head”.

Combined with Ceratizit’s FreeTurn tooling, HDT will allow all turning operations — including roughing, finishing, contour turning, face turning and longitudinal turning — with just one tool.

The company says that while the past 100 years have seen new cutting materials, new chip-breakers and new tooling systems introduced to optimise turning, the basic turning process has remained unchanged.

Dr Uwe Schleinkofer, head of the R&D cutting-tool department, said: “Even today, a contour is created with an indexable insert at a fixed angle to the workpiece; and this has not changed, despite the availability of turn-mill centres designed to manufacture components as completely as possible in a single set-up.”

Ceratizit took advantage of turn-mill machine capabilities when developing its HDT system. Instead of the ‘classic’ static position of the insert in the holder, the milling spindle is now used to provide the optimum approach angle to the workpiece, varying it without interrupting the cutting process.

This capability not only enables flexible machining of almost every workpiece contour but also ensures optimum chip-breaking — and the use of higher feed rates.

With FreeTurn tooling, a multi-sided insert is located on a slim shank (to minimise the risk of collision) in a way that ensures the cutting forces are directed into the spindle; and because the patent-pending FreeTurn insert features several cutting edges, it can offer different properties, thanks to different point angles, corner
radii and chip-breakers — even different coatings and cutting materials are possible.

These tools can be adapted to individual machining requirements and replace several tools.

Dr Schleinkofer concluded: “Highly complex contours, without any limitations, can now be made using just one FreeTurn tool.”